Kaisersteg
Coordinates: 52 ° 27 ′ 30 ″ N , 13 ° 31 ′ 10 ″ E
| Kaisersteg | ||
|---|---|---|
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| use | Pedestrians, cyclists | |
| Convicted | Hasselwerder Strasse - Laufener Strasse | |
| Crossing of | Spree | |
| place | Berlin-Oberschöneweide , Berlin-Niederschöneweide | |
| construction | Cable-stayed bridge with central pylon | |
| overall length | 140.3 m | |
| width | 5.8 m | |
| Longest span | 92.0 m | |
| building-costs | 3,730,000 euros | |
| start of building | November 2005 | |
| opening | September 25, 2007 | |
| location | ||
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The Kaisersteg was a pedestrian bridge built jointly by the Wilhelminenhof basic pension company and AEG over the Oberspree in what is now the Treptow-Köpenick district of Berlin . The second Spree crossing between Ober- and Niederschöneweide connected Laufener Straße with Hasselwerderstraße in Niederschöneweide . The filigree iron framework, designed by Heinrich Müller-Breslau , one of the leading structural engineers of his time, was one of the most important achievements in engineering around 1900. Baedeker's travel guide to Berlin and the surrounding area described the Kaisersteg as “technically remarkable” at the time. In the last days of the Second World War, SS units blew up the Kaisersteg as well as all the bridges between Ober- and Niederschöneweide. Between November 2005 and September 2007 the new building of the Kaisersteg was built as a pedestrian and cycle path bridge, which was opened to traffic on September 25, 2007 without a ceremonial opening.
Two builders - the Wilhelminenhof basic pension company and the AEG
When looking for new locations - the AEG factories in Moabit and Gesundbrunnen could no longer be expanded - their chairman Emil Rathenau found a suitable site on the Oberspree in Oberschöneweide in 1895. Due to the location directly on the river, there was enough water available as a raw material, for example for steam generation in the steam engines. The location was conveniently located on a waterway that had been developed for large shipping and was connected to the Berlin-Görlitz Railway by a freight railway . On several properties between the Spree and Wilhelminenhofstrasse, where the Wilhelminenhof basic pension company had planned the settlement of industrial companies, the AEG built its new cable plant and the Oberspree power plant by 1897, which supplied the eastern half of Berlin and the surrounding communities with electricity. The land company even left the land for the power plant to AEG free of charge in the hope of attracting further industrial companies. At the same time, the Grundrentengesellschaft and AEG agreed to build a pedestrian bridge at joint expense. The building was in their mutual interest: for AEG, the trail shortened their workers from Bahnhof Berlin-Schöneweide considerably since they no longer have the some 1.5 kilometers downstream location, built until 1891 wooden bridge at the site of today's Stubenrauchstraße bridge had to use, and the terrestrial society was able to increase the value of the development area through the second Spree bridge.
Location and design
Determining the position of the new transition turned out to be difficult. The bank on the Niederschöneweide side was already largely built on, and at the site that was finally found in the extension of Hasselwerderstrasse, the Spree was a considerable 175 meters wide and strongly curved. In the immediate vicinity were the stops of the Spree steamers for the excursion restaurants Wilhelminenhof on the Oberschöneweide side and the Hasselwerder establishment on the Niederschöneweide side. The needs of shipping therefore had to be incorporated into the planning. The requirements of the supervisory authorities were known from a preliminary draft of an arched bridge with five openings submitted by the director of the terrestrial company Carl Deul. The clearance height of the main opening should be at least 7.70 meters above normal water, "in order to spare the lively steamship traffic crossing the Spree the inconvenience of flipping the chimney" and be available in the middle of the river at a width of at least 40 meters.
The two clients entrusted the civil engineer Heinrich Müller-Breslau , professor at the Technical University of Charlottenburg with the final design . The civil engineer Karl Bernhard supported him with the calculation of the iron structure and with the site management. The “scenic picture of our beautiful Oberspree” prompted Müller-Breslau, in his own words, “to take special care to create pleasant lines in the straps”.
Müller-Breslau's bridge design exceeded the requirements of the authorities several times and was one of the most important achievements of engineering around 1900. The width of the central opening of 86 meters, about half the width of the river, allowed a largely unobstructed view of the Spree in the difficult traffic conditions for shipping in the curve. The two pillars of the river took up only 2 percent of the width of the river - in comparison , the Moabit Bridge , which is similarly located in a curve and constructed as an arch bridge , took up 13 percent, while the pillars of the Oberbaum Bridge took up 30 percent of the width of the river.
Construction work
First the company Holzmann & Co. from Frankfurt am Main began to erect the river and bank piers. The good building ground made of gravel and sand did not require any complex pile foundations , the pillars only received a simple concrete foundation. The land and river piers, made of clinker in cement mortar , soon grew out of the construction pits, which were sealed by sheet piling . Striegau granite clad the front side of the pillars, and the long sides above the water were clad with red facing bricks from the Sauen brickworks near Eberswalde . The river pillars, which are only 1 meter wide, terminated at their ends with the two slightly rounded support stones on a square base. Two granite pedestals framed the 3.5 meter wide walkway at the land pillars and closed them off at the top. The construction work on the substructure was essentially completed in autumn 1897.
The August Klönne company from Dortmund supplied the iron bridge construction. Apart from an additional, 2 meter wide wooden support pillar in the middle of the river, no further construction site installations or fixed scaffolding were required when building the bridge. Work began in the spring of 1898. First, the workers on the right bank of the river in Oberschöneweide assembled the bridge in four sections - the right and left side openings with their transverse construction and the associated portal and the right and left halves of the central opening, still without the arch. The parts of the bridge were driven in with the help of two spree taps, on which Heinrich Müller-Breslau had a portal-like scaffolding erected, which was well stiffened with the ends of the ship. The two ships were connected and stiffened to form a double vehicle between these two scaffolding at a distance of about 20 meters. The fitters pushed the assembled bridge section rolling on rails into this auxiliary structure until it protruded about 10 meters evenly on both sides. The double vehicle then transported the bridge part before the relevant bridge opening where it tackles raised about the height of the bridge bearing. The barges now entered the bridge opening, where the bridge section was lowered onto the bearings. As a last step, the workers dismantled the auxiliary scaffolding on one side in order to pull the ships out from under the bridge again. The process of running in took only one day for the last parts of the bridge, more time was required to dismantle the auxiliary scaffolding.
The filigree iron framework of the bridge lay 4.10 meters above normal water on the banks. In the middle of the bridge the distance was 9 meters and next to the river pillars it was still 8 meters. The high position of the bridge, which is favorable for shipping traffic, required the land pillars to compensate for the roads about 3 meters below. As a compromise between a staircase and a long ramp, Müller-Breslau designed stairs with steps of 1.20 meters, which made crossing the bridge with bicycles and handcarts not comfortable but possible.
After the last quarter of the bridge had been drawn in, the iron structure had to be aligned and completed in the central opening by installing the central joint and the arches. The portals were given iron decorations in Gothic-style medieval forms - finial-like crowning of the portals, battlements , rosettes , coats of arms with the imperial eagle and allegorical representations of electricity, similar to those found at the nearby Oberspree power station. The cables were pulled in, the signal lighting for shipping was installed and the walkway was given its wooden planking. The bridge lighting naturally had to be electric with AEG as the client. Two arc lamps in the portals and one in the middle of the river with some light bulbs lit the bridge in the dark.
As early as October 1, 1898, the bridge was handed over to private use by the electricity company and the cable works, before it passed into the ownership of the municipality of Oberschöneweide at the beginning of November 1898. The construction costs including all ancillary work totaled around 110,000 gold marks . In keeping with its importance, the new Spree crossing was proudly named Kaisersteg.
Destruction and new construction
Units of the SS blew up on 22 April 1945 Kaisersteg and Treskowbrücke to the invading Red Army stopped. The industrial landscape in Nieder- and Oberschöneweide lost one of its defining landmarks. While the Treskow Bridge was being restored in the post-war years, the remains of the pedestrian bridge disappeared.
In the second half of the 1950s there were plans to rebuild the Kaisersteg. According to press reports from 1957, the bridge was to be rebuilt in the second five-year plan in the GDR (from 1958). This was hoped for better development of the Schöneweider industrial area. These plans did not materialize.
The privatization of the state- owned companies by the Treuhandanstalt after German reunification largely failed, so that almost all large companies had to close in a short time. What was once the largest industrial area in Europe has become an industrial wasteland and redevelopment area. As part of the redevelopment concept, plans for the new construction of the Kaisersteg as a pedestrian and cycle path bridge were drawn up to improve the networking of Ober- and Niederschöneweide. The Senate Administration announced a competition, in the result of which the design of a modern building by the Munich engineering company Schmitt Stumpf Frühauf was selected for implementation.
The new construction of the 140.3 meter long and approximately 400 ton heavy bridge was carried out as a cable stayed bridge with a 5 meter wide walkway. The 32-meter-high pylon , on which the ropes for the 48.3-meter and 92-meter-long bridge segments are attached, was originally intended to have the shape of an "H". For static reasons - the original shape would have offered the wind too much surface to attack - the pylon was given the shape of an "A". This change in planning led to additional costs of 770,000 euros and thus to total construction costs of around 4 million euros. The costs are shared by the European Union (Fund for Regional Development) to 75 percent, the State of Berlin to 16.67 percent and the Federal Republic of Germany to 8.22 percent .
The construction work began on November 9th, 2005 with the first symbolic ramming in the presence of Senator for Urban Development Ingeborg Junge-Reyer . The north abutment and the pylon were built in construction pits sealed with sheet piling in the river, the south abutment on land on Hasselwerderstrasse. The bridge parts and the pylon reached the construction site by water. The erection of the pylon on June 4, 2007 and the assembly of the bridge segments on June 6 and 7 were carried out with the help of a floating crane. The bridge reopened on September 25, 2007. The ceremonial opening took place on December 13, 2007 together with the opening of the newly laid out town square on Oberschöneweider side.
The new bridge makes it easier for residents to use the shopping and recreational facilities in both districts. For the students of the University of Technology and Economics , which has partially moved to Oberschöneweide, it shortens the way to Berlin-Schöneweide train station , just like its predecessor a hundred years ago to the workers of AEG.
Bicycle traffic
One of 17 permanently installed automatic bike counting stations in Berlin has been located on Kaisersteg since 2016. Of all the places in the city that have a counting point, the footbridge is the fifteenth most frequented place by bicycle traffic.
literature
- Heinrich Müller-Breslau: The Kaisersteg over the Spree at Oberschöneweide. In construction journal. 50 (1900), col. 65-76, plates 12-13. Digitized in the holdings of the Central and State Library Berlin .
- Matthias Donath: Monuments in Berlin: Treptow-Köpenick district. Districts Nieder- and Oberschöneweide. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2005, ISBN 3-937251-10-3 , p. 39.
- Eckhard Thiemann, Dieter Deszyk, Horstpeter Metzing: Berlin and its bridges. Jaron Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89773-073-1 , p. 181.
- Anja Schlender: cranes, art and children. Oberschöneweide is developing from a former industrial site into a residential and work area. In: Berliner Zeitung . dated December 20, 2007.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Berlin and the surrounding area. 19th edition. Verlag Karl Baedeker, Leipzig 1921, p. 188.
- ↑ Berlin Week. Local edition for Köpenick. No. 40, Volume 18, Thursday, October 4, 2007
- ^ Heinrich Müller-Breslau: The Kaisersteg over the Spree at Oberschöneweide. In: Journal of Construction. 50 (1900), p. 66.
- ^ Heinrich Müller-Breslau: The Kaisersteg over the Spree at Oberschöneweide. In: Zeitschrift für Bauwesen , Volume 50, 1900, p. 70.
- ^ Heinrich Müller-Breslau: The Kaisersteg over the Spree at Oberschöneweide. In: Journal of Construction. 50 (1900), p. 75.
- ↑ New Bridge for Schöneweider Workers , in: Berliner Zeitung of March 15, 1957, p. 6.
- ^ Sabine Flatau: Filigree across the Spree. In: Berliner Morgenpost. dated July 22, 2002 ( online , accessed September 18, 2012).
- ↑ Figures according to the press release of the Treptow-Köpenick district office from June 4, 2007
- ^ Sabine Flatau: Building bridges over the Spree. In: Berliner Morgenpost. dated June 1, 2007 ( online , accessed September 18, 2012).
- ↑ Traffic survey bike counter for Berlin: How many cyclists are there? Retrieved February 5, 2019 .